The Comet.

Boston Common, December 6, 1882 During The Transit Of Venus

I Love all sights of earth and skies,
From flowers that glow to stars that shine;
The comet and the penny show,
All curious things, above, below,
Hold each in turn my wandering eyes:
I claim the Christian Pagan's line,
Humani nihil, - even so, -
And is not human life divine?
When soft the western breezes blow,
And strolling youths meet sauntering maids,
I love to watch the stirring trades
Beneath the Vallombrosa shades
Our much-enduring elms bestow;
The vender and his rhetoric's flow,
That lambent stream of liquid lies;
The bait he dangles from his line,
The gudgeon and his gold-washed prize.
I halt before the blazoned sign
That bids me linger to admire
The drama time ...

The Comet! He is on his way,
And singing as he flies;
The whizzing planets shrink before
The spectre of the skies;
Ah! well may regal orbs burn blue,
And satellites turn pale,
Ten million cubic miles of head,
Ten billion leagues of tail!

On, on by whistling spheres of light
He flashes and he flames;
He turns not to the left nor right,
He asks them not their names;
One spurn from his demoniac heel, -
Away, away they fly,
Where darkness might be bottled up
And sold for "Tyrian dye."

And what would happen to the land,
And how would look the sea,
If in the bearded devil's path
Our earth should chance to be?
Full hot and high the sea would boil,
Full red the forests gleam;
Methought I saw and heard it all
In a dyspepti...

        Licht glühte des Helicon Klippe
        In Mittagspurpur und Blau.


Light gleamed upon Helicon's mountain
    In the purple of mid-day and blue,
As by Aganippe's clear fountain
    A shepherd boy slept in the dew.
In seeking the lambs of his master,
    From Askra, he'd roamed through the wood,
But now all the strength of the pastor
    By the heat of the sun was subdued.

Then from sun-lighted fields of old story,
    Came Nine who were heavenly fair;
Their limbs were of beauty a glory,
    And a glory of gold was their hair.
They moved as in musical numbers,
    To the grove, Aganippe across,
And laid by the youth in his slumbers,
    Their gifts in the emerald moss.

The first a bronze style like a feather,
    Th...

        Einst ziert' ich, den Aether durchspähend,
        Als Spitze des Urgebirg's Stock,
        Ruhm, Hoheit und Stellung verschmähend,
        Ward ich zum erratischen Block.


Once high on the mountain-peak rising,
    In sunlight I shone like a flame;
But height and position despising,
    A wandering boulder became.

They say of a thinker's bold sallies,
    He goes where the ice will not bear;
I was beckoned to false hollow valleys,
    By snow maids, seductive and fair.

Thus driven by furious fancies,
    I went down the hill with a shout;
But atoned for my youthful romances
    By a thousand years rolling about.

Cried the Glacier, his teeth sharply showing,
    Here, my blade, you'll be polished right well,
And f...

    A plummet of the changing universe,
    Far-cast, I flare
    Through gulfs the sun's uncharted orbits bind,
    And spaces bare
    That intermediate darks immerse
    By road of sun nor world confined.
    Upon my star-undominated gyre
    I mark the systems vanish one by one;
    Among the swarming worlds I lunge,
    And sudden plunge
    Close to the zones of solar fire;
    Or 'mid the mighty wrack of stars undone,
    Flash, and with momentary rays
    Compel the dark to yield
    Their aimless forms, whose once far-potent blaze
    In ashes chill is now inurned.
    A space revealed,
    I see their planets turned,
    Where holders of the heritage of breath
    Exultant rose, and sank to barren death
    Beneath the stars' unhe...

Erratic Soul of some great Purpose, doomed
To track the wild illimitable space,
Till sure propitiation has been made
For the divine commission unperformed!
What was thy crime?    Ahasuerus' curse
Were not more stern on earth than thine in Heaven!

Art thou the Spirit of some Angel World,
For grave rebellion banished from thy peers,
Compelled to watch the calm, immortal stars,
Circling in rapture the celestial void,
While the avenger follows in thy train
To spur thee on to wretchedness eterne?

Or one of nature's wildest fantasies,
From which she flies in terror so profound,
And with such whirl of torment in her breast,
That mighty earthquakes yearn where'er she treads;
While War makes red its terrible right hand,
And Famine stalks abroad all lea...